Lackawanna Co Pennsylvania is leasing 85 old, no longer usable, Advanced Voting Solutions DREs to Elections USA Inc. EUSAInc is the company made up of ex-AVS officials that has taken over the AVS contracts. Now they claim they are going to use the machines to develop an electronic poll book. Who is this poll book being developed for? AVS is no longer in business and their machines are only used in very few jurisdictions. Why does EUSAInc. need 85 machines? Just two questions to ask an industry that has been involved in questionable dealings for years....

The Florida computer programmer turned infamous whistleblower was allegedly asked by Jeb Bush crony (and future FL-24-R Congressman) Tom Feeney to write vote-flipping software for him in 2000 (here's the quick summary version of BRAD BLOG's coverage of the scandal). At the time, Curtis, then a loyal Republican, delivered the vote-rigging prototype to Feeney under the assumption that his software would be used to prevent e-voting manipulation by Democrats. When Curtis learned that the true purpose was to game the election results in South Florida, he blew the whistle.

A stacked-deck investigation by the Florida Ethics Commission --- where 6 of the 8 members of the panel are either Bush or Feeney appointees, or closely tied to one or both --- dismissed Curtis’ allegations without allowing him to testify, and without examining email and other evidence in the case, in violation of FL law. But Curtis would not go quietly.

He became a crusader, speaking at election integrity events around the country and eventually delivering jaw-dropping testimony (video here) to a stunned Congressional committee (who did nothing in response). Curtis even passed a lie detector test administered by the retired chief polygrapher for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Meanwhile, Feeney has been branded among the “Top 25 Most Corrupt in Congress,” for three years straight, by CREW, the non-partisan DC ethics watchdog group, most notably for his involvement --- and golf junket to Scotland --- with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In 2006, Curtis launched his first congressional bid --- now as a Democrat --- taking on Feeney himself for his FL-24 seat. A pre-election Zogby poll showed Curtis in a statistical dead heat with Feeney --- despite Feeney’s big-money smear campaign against Curtis (‘CrazyClintCurtis.com’ featured doctored photos of Curtis wearing a tin foil hat). But on election night, Feeney was announced the winner 57%/43%. Problem is, those election results didn’t make much sense based on the Zogby poll or Curtis’ own internal polling. So Curtis did something remarkable. He filed a Congressional election challenge.

His team went door to door collecting signed affidavits from FL-24 voters testifying as to how they voted. They found the results to be wildly off, by double digits in some places. Despite this evidence, the Democratically controlled House committee summarily dismissed his election challenge, along with several others, without bothering to even review Curtis' evidence.

And yet, Curtis is once again going after the FL-24 Congressional seat. Only this time, he’s not just running against Feeney. First he must defeat an attempt to challenge him by the Democratic party's hand-picked candidate.

We caught up with Curtis on the campaign trail where he made it clear, in our exclusive interview, that he had no intention of lying down or rolling over for naysayers, Democratic insiders, the woman chosen by the DCCC to challenge him, and certainly not the corrupt Tom Feeney...

Today we have the typical Sunday hodge-podge of news, editorials, and columns. I’ll take this space to remind every voter that one of the major problems we are seeing is voter registration databases and the fact that a lot of otherwise qualified voters are being left off of those lists. Check with your local elections office and, if necessary, the state and ensure your name is still in the file. Do it now and maybe again in October. Better safe than sorry....

An inspection by Princeton’s Ed Felten of summary tapes not previously inspected from Sequoia Advantage voting machines used in New Jersey adds more evidence that Sequoia has misrepresented the cause of voting machine failures last February. Some of the summary tapes actually show that the total number of votes recorded on the machines is not accurate. That could not have happened under Sequoia’s nonsensical explanation that it was poll worker mistakes. It is clear that an investigation must be carried out with no involvement by the vendor.

Links to today's most notable voting new stories, including the above, follow below as usual...

Just for the record, it's absolutely insane that Air America has suspended Randi Rhodes for calling Hillary Clinton "a fucking whore" when she wasn't even on the air. Clearly, the folks who run that continuously sinking ship these days have no clue how either radio, or the U.S. Constitution, work. And while the network has always been mismanaged from Day One by the veritable raft of geniuses who have run it --- and more have come and gone now than we can keep track of --- this latest crew may take the cake.

Our friend Mike Malloy, formerly of AAR and now of NovaM, says the current crop of owners are "right wing thugs." And how were those "right wing thugs able to get inside AAR with their bags of money?" Malloy asked rhetorically last night...because the wealthy, millionaire, "Leftwing liberal sons-of-bitches refused to put any up."

Randi: The folks at NovaM are great, as you already know. We suspect you'll eventually be much happier there anyway. Just saying. Especially when AAR goes down for good. Which would be a terrible shame, if hardly a surprise, but could happen any day now in our opinion. Thanks for nothin', Lefties.

Art Levine at The American Prospect has a new must read piece titled, “The Republican War on Voting: Using the Department of Justice, friendly governors, and its usual propaganda outlets, the GOP has propagated the myth of voter fraud to purge the rolls of non-Republicans.” Here's a small taste of it...

"Sharrard's cautionary tone was a response to the Republican Party's ongoing nationwide campaign to suppress the low-income minority vote by propagating the myth of voter fraud. Using various tactics --- including media smears, bogus lawsuits, restrictive new voting laws and policies, and flimsy prosecutions --- Republican operatives, election officials, and the GOP-controlled Justice Department have limited voting access and gone after voter-registration groups such as ACORN..."

"Unfortunately, progressives have tended to pay more attention to Election Day dirty tricks and to electronic voting machines than to a more systemic threat: the Republican campaign to suppress the votes of low-income, young, and minority voters through restrictive legislation and rulings, all based on the mythic specter of voter fraud..."

"Unfortunately, the public hasn't heard just how nonexistent the voter fraud epidemic actually is. While progressives have successfully challenged some of the most restrictive laws in court, they're still playing catch-up when it comes to combating the glib sound bites of voter-fraud alarmists. Republicans and the Bush Justice Department have cloaked their schemes under such noble-sounding concepts as "ballot integrity." The GOP's vote-suppression playbook features everything from phony lawsuits to questionable investigations to authoritative-seeming reports, all with the aim of promoting restrictive laws."

In related news, John Tanner, the man in charge of the Justice Department's efforts to disenfranchise millions of voters until he was forced to resign after The BRAD BLOG captured and exposed him making crazy offensive comments on video (see below), has a new job, apparently. Tanner is reportedly now a fellow with the Alabama Law Institute - which provides the Legislature with legal expertise in drafting and revising laws.

This week we obtained six new summary tapes, from machines in Bergen and Gloucester counties. Two of these new tapes contradict Sequoia’s explanation and show more serious discrepancies that we saw before.

His article offers the details of the latest findings, but for the disturbing --- and too-often hilarious --- background on this incredible continuing scandal...

Election officials in Pima Co., Arizona, have been on the wrong side of issues quite a bit lately. Because of this it is surprising that they may ask the Secretary of State to change the “Election Procedures Manual” to disallow tabulation of votes before election day, increase the size of hand-counted audits, disallow the use of modems to transmit results, improve ballot-verification procedures and chain-of-custody records, and other worthy changes. The county also wants to totally get rid of all DREs. It’s amazing what happens at times when a good citizen group stands up and demands that changes be made; people actually begin to listen.

{Ed Note: Yes, and it doesn't hurt that they had to take the county officials to court! Leave them little other option, eventually, but to do the above, or end up in court again. Thus, the actions of the Pima County officials aren't actually that "surprising" after all, given the tremendous work by the citizen advocates there, as John points out. - BF}

Meanwhile, in Georgia, citizens involved in an electronic voting lawsuit have announced they have filed a summary judgment motion seeking to ban the machines. The motion “centers on a lack of equal protection and due process that the plaintiffs claim Election Day voters have when compared to absentee voters who use optically scanned paper ballots. The motion contends that retention of tangible paper ballots is required for voters to verify their actual ballot choices, for election officials to provide true recounts as needed, to investigate voting discrepancies, to prevent fraud and to produce evidence for contested elections.”

Those stories, and the rest of today's notable voting news headlines, all linked below as usual...

Yet another voting machine company --- a small-ish one, MicroVote --- may soon be out of business, or so it claims in response to a court decision in Indiana, where the judge has had the temerity to actually bother enforcing the rule of law and holding a voting machine company to an actual standard. Go figure. Of course, we're broken hearted about it...

A judge has thrown out a voting-machine company's appeal of a 360-thousand-dollar fine imposed by the secretary of state.

The Marion Circuit Court says MicroVote missed a filing deadline to challenge a fine for selling uncertified equipment. The Indianapolis company didn't get its machines recertified until a week before the 2006 primary.

"We just can't tolerate vendors that have this lackadaisical attitude toward proper certification and say, 'Well, nothing bad really happened, so there's no reason to go after us like this,'" says Deputy Secretary of State Matt Tusing. "We simply enforce the laws that are currently in place."

An administrative law judge recommended last week that MicroVote be banned from selling machines in Indiana for five years. The Indiana Election Commission must decide whether to follow that recommendation, which Price warns would put the company out of business.

MicroVote supplies voting machines to 49 of Indiana's 92 counties.

Not sure which law they refer to when they say that "In 2005, Congress required all voting-machine manufacturers to be recertified." Are they talking about the Indiana state legislature? Or did the reporter just get it wrong here? Color us clueless, but too busy to dig deeper for the moment. Your help comments are welcome if you know what the hell they're referring to there.

He further reported that counties found themselves in the unenviable position of having to choose between using uncertified software or otherwise ignoring both federal and state laws requiring a voting device for those with disabilities. "Some counties are choosing to ignore state law and use the uncertified machines," Gideon wrote at the time.

Sitting in this week for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, David Bender joins Ring of Fire co-host/attorney Mike Papantonio to discuss, in the first five minutes of the show, the finally-unsealed qui tam fraud suit brought by Pap and RFK Jr's law firms against voting machine company Hart InterCivic, on behalf of former employee/computer technician turned whistleblower William Singer.

We had originally broken Singer's remarkable story back in 2006. Our conversations shortly thereafter with Kennedy, and then with Papantonio's lawfirm, led to the filing of the suit, alleging a host of improprieties and criminally fraudulent behavior by the voting machine company as they dummied up voting machines during sales presentations, and concealed known failures, such as the possibilities of lost and miscounted votes, in their systems.

Pap also notes, during discussion of the case, that the nearly-two years it had to stay sealed by law --- while the DoJ ate up time in deciding whether or not to join the case --- is unusual in and of itself. Normally, in such qui tam cases, the DoJ is given just 60 days to decide whether or not to join with the whistleblower on behalf of the United States. Pap also goes on to note what may, or may not, be a coincidence: the US Attorney in CO, where the suit was filed, was removed shortly after this case was brought in his district, but before the decision was ultimately made by the DoJ not to join the suit...For now...

UPDATE: Here is an audio version of the first five minutes of the show, for those who had problems using the video player above...

A recent study by Missourians for Honest Elections, of St. Louis County call center sheets and maintenance logs filed by election board technicians at the polls last Feb. 5, revealed interesting data. 181 problems were reported and of those reports 89 (essentially 50% of the problems) involved the voting machine voter verified paper audit trail printers. The problems ranged from 36 votes not appearing at all on the paper trail to failure to print, loose cables, jammed paper, and “printer error.” We want to save DREs by installing a vvpat printer. Why?

Mesa Co Colorado election officials were prepared to defy any orders from the state not to use their iVotronic voting machines in Nov. In fact, while the machines were decertified by the state the county purchased 130 more of the DREs. Now the county is hat-in-hand in front of the county commission asking for a whopping $5,759 per month for storage for those 130 new machines. If they were using optical-scan they would not need the extra storage and could probably cut down on the amount of storage they are using. It takes far less room to store one optical scan machine per polling place than it does all of the DREs needed to serve the county’s polling places....

Jonathan Turley: It really is amazing because Congress, including the Democrats, have avoided any type of investigation into torture because they do not want to deal with the fact that the President ordered war crimes. But evidence keeps on coming out - the only thing we don’t have is a group picture with a detainee attached to electrical wires. I mean every time we see more evidence we have more and more high ranking people at the scene of this crime. And what you get from this is that this was a premeditated and carefully orchestrated torture program. Not torture, but a torture program.

"Mondo Joe" at DU came up with the following little gem of a screenshot from Conservadepia, which bills itself as "An encyclopaedia with articles written from a conservative viewpoint" or "The Trustworthy Encyclopedia"...

Hilarious enough on its own. But not one to run something without checking it first, we stopped by the statistics page ourselves last night just to verify it. And while it looks like the "Most viewed pages" have changed slightly, the latest batch of Wingnut faves, as seen in the screenshot below, is no less telling...